good point, but again. it's a tired parody. making fun of neil diamond is like tripped a blind man. it's easy and been done to the point where it's almost offensive. i mean, there are bands with long careers parodying his music and movies that ridicule his legacy to pop culture. what is so special about this parody that hasn't been pounded into our heads by now?

i'm going to take the liberty of commenting on your points one by one. noty a fair way to discuss, but some of what you say i agree with and other things i want to discuss further.

10 as you know, i don't think this clever, and i dislike the use of the fam,iliar image as a crutch when there is no good idea. i DO agree with the one-color punch, but tha idea was delivered by the original designer of the diamond advert, not the parodyist.

2) again, that was not delivered by the parodyist, but by the original designer of the diamond ad.

3) again, that was delivered by the original design of the diamond ad.

4) i don't think i can totally speak tho this point, because i don't know the band, it's music, it's image. i do now the word death and all of it's implications on many many levels. however, i don't see that word as being very cleverly used here, other than a skull. the rest of it says neail diamond and a touch of michael jackson. remove the skull and you have a confusing mess.

now, we as a species try to impose meaning where there is none (it's the basis of a lot of great art, especially surrealism), but the word death has soooooo many meanings and implications that we can read meaning into just about any image it sits in juxtaposition with. so, that's sort of a gimmee.

off hand (since you asked) i don't know. to begin with, i would not have done a parody of an old ad. in my history, i did that to death (again, the joke). maybe i could done a bad wisecrack parody of my own work? a lot of you would have enjoyed that, but would not have been a good poster beyond this tiny group here.

i would have to think about it and study the problem and come up with my solution over time. it's how i approach all my work. when i whip out a quickie idea, it often is a weak effort (but not always. i can work very fats). but, this one would take some thought.

the problem with parody is that the impact and inherant power of the parody plays off of the efforts of the original artist/designer that you are parodying. basically, you are taking his thinking and echoing it. it's really not YOUR thinking, it's just your 'wisecrack". now, that's fine, but the wisecrack better be damned fine or it just becomes weak. i think this fails as a wisecrack. it;'s not good enough thinking. see my point?

so, then should we all call the parody a great piece, when it just echoes the 'great' work that created it in the first place?

a good question. who DOES decide something is burned out? i think E do as a group decide that, and we ususally do it unconciously. we just sorta decide something is over and move on - like it'as all a fad.

i think we can do better than that here. it's a community (we all have agreed ont hat years ago), so, let's have community discussions and figure out how that process works.